Introduction

Around 30 million PowerPoint presentations are created
everyday. Probably, a small proportion of them need to be re-purposed as
online rich media content that can be delivered and managed. Let us assume
that this proportion is as miniscule as 2% - that translates to a market
of 600,000 presentations each working day. Consider the phenomenal amount
of potential already available in this nascent area - and you won't be
surprised to discover at least 10 major players in the market. Many of
these players are going through a consolidation process that involves mergers,
takeovers and relaunches.

Wanadu, Latitude and MeetingPlace

Our product for review - iCreate has been through it all. It started as
a PowerPoint to Flash conversion tool from Wanadu, a company that was later
acquired by Latitude, the leading provider of integrated web and voice applications
for the enterprise. Latitude's award-winning MeetingPlace solution that enables
real-time collaborative meetings through web browsers, groupware applications
and telephones (PBX, cellular as well as IP phones) is particularly well-placed
to harness synergies emanating from using the iCreate product within their
broad concept.

Not surprisingly, Latitude has integrated the iCreate product within its
MeetingPlace framework to provide a complete value-added solution that might
strengthen the already firm existence that MeetingPlace has in the web and
voice conferencing market. That's all the more significant since Microsoft
acquired its chief competitor PlaceWare a few months ago (PlaceWare has since
been relaunched as Microsoft Office Live Meeting).

For the rest of this review, we'll focus entirely on iCreate rather than
the full MeetingPlace spectrum. For more info on MeetingPlace, please visit
their website:

iCreate - Register as a New User

You can either login using an existing account or register for a free trial
account. Once you opt to register, you'll need to fill a profile form with
info such as name, username, password, email address, etc.

In due course, you can expect to receive an account activation email in
your inbox which confirms that your MeetingPlace iCreate account has been
enabled. Thereafter, you can login with your username and password.

iCreate's PowerPoint add-in

Probably the first thing you should do after registration is to download
the iCreate PowerPoint add-in. This download weighs around 7 mb currently
- however, you'll need to have Sun's Java Runtime Engine (later than version
1.3) installed on a computer that will author iCreate content. Fortunately,
MeetingPlace provides an alternative download of the iCreate PowerPoint add-in
that includes the JRE. This download weighs around 21 mb.

The iCreate PowerPoint add-in only functions on Windows NT (with Service
Pack 4 or later), Windows 2000 and Windows XP. Surprisingly, the installation
routine proceeds with an installation on Windows 98 as well - also, MeetingPlace
provides no info about compatible operating systems on the add-in download
page.

PowerPoint versions 2000, 2002 and 2003 on Windows are supported by the
iCreate add-in.

Installation is a quick affair - once the setup routine has been through,
you can expect to find a new MeetingPlace menu within your PowerPoint interface
(see screenshots below).

As you can see in the Publish to Flash sub-menu, you
can output content both locally and online. In most of iCreate's competing
programs, you can either publish to Flash locally or on a server - iCreate
is probably the only program that allows you both options.

A Test Presentation 01

My first test presentation is a beginner's look at
Learning Management Systems - it's a simple presentation that spans a few
slides - one of these slides includes several text boxes that have transparency
values ranging from 20% to 100%. Also, it uses Type 1, TrueType and OpenType
fonts - although all except one of the fonts are standard Windows fonts
that are included as part of the OS. The non-standard font used is ITC
Officina Sans - but that's also part of Adobe Type Manager Lite's installation.

Publishing this presentation through iCreate's online
component did not render the fonts properly - the local conversion on the
desktop performed flawlessly though. I asked Michael about this - here
is his response:

The trial server is a standard Windows 2000 Server.
iCreate will convert only those fonts that are installed on the server
otherwise it does a closest fit. Generally, we sell the iCreate to a
department or enterprise in which case the buyer has the responsibility
to install the fonts that its' users are using. So, typefaces do convert
as you would expect as long as they are installed on the server. As you
probably have noticed, the typfaces convert well when you do local conversion
since you have the fonts installed. In either case, you can get a report
that lists fonts that were not converted (i.e. installed).

A PowerPoint converted locally is identical to PowerPoints converted
on the server. However, locally converted presentations are watermarked until
the user purchases a license.

I thereafter replaced ITC Officina Sans with Trebuchet
MS and the conversion to rich media Flash performed flawlessly - you can
see the repurposed presentation here (opens in a separate window):